We had another early start the next day, we had booked onto do some caving and black water rafting at Waitomo caves, it was about a 2 hour drive and we arrived a tad early so we checked some internet, had some lunch and pottered around before checking in for our 4 hours of fun. We were first fitted into two piece wetsuits, given some wet socks, gummy boots and a fetching helmet with headtorch, and the bundled onto a van and taken off to the caves, once there we ...

So we had a chilled evening in Taupo, the weather was rather pleasant so we sat in the sun, had a few beers and a bbq and then crashed in the van with a movie. The next morning we were still unsure of our plans, we were in two minds whether to spend a day chilling around Taupo or drive out to the east coast, we decided to do some sight seeing and see how we felt at lunch time. We started our sight seeing with an area called the Moon Craters, a natural volcanic ...

We decided over night that we really needed to cut back on campsite expenditure, our money was disappearing quick so we decided we would spend the next few nights in the DOC (Dept of conservation) campsites, basically fields with portaloos which you can camp on for next to nothing, so we grabbed some hot showers and headed off. As we were leaving Franz we spotted Predator, the name of the Spaceship belonging to the couple we'd spent a night with in Queenstown, s...

So the next morning was the day of our Milford Sound trip, we woke up and the weather was far from great, but we got showered, had brekky and set off hoping it would improve. The road to Milford was open again, but we did have to carry snow chains due to avalanche risk, and because there was a large amount of snow due to drop up in the mountains. We rented some chains and set off on the road, it was a 120km drive and the first 90km's or so were pretty dull, we...

Howdy!! We are taking a rest afternoon so thought i would take the chance to keep you all up to date, i have entitled this blog......THE SEARCH FOR THE ELUSIVE YELLOW EYED PENGUINS!!!So we set off from Mt Cook fairly early as we had a long drive ahead, and a few planned stops along the way! First up was a long drive from Mount Cook back to the East Coast and a town called Oamaru, Mount Cook is only 25kms from the Tasman sea on the West coast, but not accessible ...